A few hours after he announced his chief of staff would leave City Hall to work at Dallas ISD, Mayor Mike Rawlings said the time has come to end the drama over school Superintendent Mike Miles.

"We need the school board to decide whether Mike Miles is going to be our superintendent of schools," Rawlings said. "If a majority says that we don’t want him, we need to get somebody else in there and move on. If he is, then we all need to get behind him and focus on these kids."

The mayor has been a strong supporter of Miles' efforts to reform the school system.

But today he sounded fed up with the conflicts and divisions issuing from 3700 Ross Ave.

The bitter feelings need to be put aside and people need to move forward on a reform agenda, Rawlings said.

The mayor rejected the idea that some of the conflict arises from deep-seated opposition to Miles' agenda among some on the board. Miles has shaken up the district by replacing principals and teachers, some of them popular and well-connected.

It's not about whether there should be reform, Rawlings said. It's about personal differences.

"I've looked at this pretty closely and I find this is heavily personality driven," he said. "Someone might disagree with my point of view [and say] that it’s fundamentally at a deeper level – that it’s about we don’t want reform. That’s not what I sense."

Rawlings said he hopes his chief of staff, Paula Blackmon, will help build lines of communication when she departs to head up intergovernmental affairs for the schools.

"Paula in her role can help facilitate that communication and minimize at times what seems like pettiness to us all," Rawlings said.